Medical sources say six killed in an Israeli air strike on Khan Younis and six others in a raid on Beit Hanoon.
At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza, according to medical sources, as the Israeli military said it deployed ground troops to a so-called “security corridor” in the south of the territory.
At least six people were killed in an air strike on Khan Younis in southern Gaza and six others in a raid on Beit Hanoon in the north, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Israel has pushed to seize more territory in Gaza since it shattered a weeks-long truce in its war with Hamas in mid-March and resumed its bombardment of the devastated territory.
Israel has intensified its attacks since then, saying that it will continue to escalate until the Palestinian group Hamas frees Israeli captives that were seized during the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
Israeli troops deployed to a newly established security corridor across southern Gaza, the military said on Saturday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week announced the new “Morag Corridor” and suggested it would cut off the southern city of Rafah, which Israel had ordered forcibly evacuated, from the rest of Gaza.
It was not immediately clear how many forces were deployed, or where exactly the new corridor was located.
Morag is the name of a Jewish settlement that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis, and Netanyahu had suggested it would run between the cities.
Maps published by Israeli media showed the corridor running the width of the narrow coastal strip from east to west.
Earlier on Saturday, Hamas’s armed wing published a video showing two Israeli captives alive in Gaza, speaking to the camera and describing how they had survived an alleged Israeli strike.
Israeli campaign group, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, issued a statement confirming that the family of Maxim Herkin had identified him as one of the two captives featured in the video. Herkin’s family urged the media not to publish the video.
Israeli media named the second captive as Israeli soldier Bar Kuperstein.
The two men were taken from the Nova music festival and transported to Gaza during the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel that killed at least 1,139 people, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics.
Fifty-eight captives remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military says are dead.
During the six-week ceasefire that ended with Israel’s resumption of air strikes on Gaza on March 18, fighters handed over 33 captives, eight of them dead.
Israel’s military response to the October 7 attack has killed at least 50,669 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Health Ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
The United Nations said that at least 100 children have been killed or injured every day in Gaza since the strikes resumed.
“Nothing justifies the killing of children,” Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), posted on X on Saturday.
Trilateral meeting
As part of the diplomatic efforts for a truce in Gaza, French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he would hold a trilateral summit on the situation in Gaza with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
“In response to the Gaza emergency and during my visit to Egypt at President al-Sisi’s invitation, we will hold a trilateral summit with the Egyptian president and the King of Jordan,” Macron wrote on X ahead of his trip.
The French president is expected in Cairo on Sunday evening, where he will hold talks with his Egyptian counterpart on Monday morning.
The trilateral summit will be held the same day in the Egyptian capital, according to Macron’s office.
On Tuesday, Macron will also visit the Egyptian port of El-Arish, 50km (30 miles) west of Gaza, to meet humanitarian and security workers and demonstrate his “constant mobilisation in favour of a ceasefire”.
El-Arish is a transit point for international aid intended for Gaza.